White Room

About the White Room

The White Room provides current information relating to new technologies for energy efficiency. Stay connected with the latest news, events, and scientific breakthroughs in this fast moving sector. Use our filters on the left or click here to send a suggestion for content to add.

The prominent global consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, came out with a new report showing why solar photovoltaics have hit a tipping point. The report highlights three factors that are giving the solar industry so much drive.

Physicists at Rutgers University have discovered that energy-carrying particles generated by packets of light can travel a thousand times farther in organic semiconductors than scientists previously observed. The discovery could result in more efficient and inexpensive plastic solar cells.

A German startup (Heliatek) has developed a new type of lightweight solar panel its developers say can be integrated into the design of buildings and even used in electricity-producing tinted windows. The technology utilizes oligomer-based organic solar cells.

New thin, uniform coatings could reduce the cost of making conventional silicon solar cells. Start-up Natcore Technology is adding an antireflective coating to silicon wafers to help them to absorb more light. It will also offer a more advanced antireflection technology, called black silicon.

Forests of carbon nanotubes are an efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), according to new research by collaborators at Rice University and Tsinghua University.

GaN-based solar cells for integration to multi-junction photovoltaics could raise concentrated photovoltaic system efficiencies to more than 50%. UC Santa Barbara researchers are some of those designing the devices.